best MADI card choices?

yes pop, i have 2 options in the pipeline as of now, the Orion32, and another set of converters i'm checking into, either  way, the madi runs more stable. If i get an Orion32, i will try it with the USB2 chip 1st, it's supposed to run 32 channels @ 24/96K no problem on the mac osx platform, less tracks at higher reso's that i will almost certainly never use, unless i hear a diff for the better anyway? then it'll be madi for sure.

As far as monitoring, i'll probably be doing most of that from a stereo pair of Dac's off the 2nd capture daw.

alpha link looks cool, just light about 8 channels, my board has 32 input channels, 8 stereo aux busses and the 2 buss

MADI never took off...RedNET is simply another stab at what too few care about--high def multichannel interconnectivity. The advantage is that ethernet cables are cheap and have a longer run...

That said, and I KNOW Tony doesn't care what I think...if I were going to be mixing on a desk and outboard, I'd just get a RADAR and STFU. If the budget isn't there for that...there are way too many inexpensive 16x and Auroras around that are a PCIe AES card away from turning a cheap ass computer into a 16x32 digital "deck". I literally don't think converters are getting better. We're done, boys and girls--which is why Burl and JCF represent the way forward, IMO--if you don't want to throw everything through what equates to a Mackie circuit...they address the problem with PCM conversion--the analog front end. And I guess I should put "problem" in quotes. There are people who love that sound. I am not one. I can deal with it...and have...

I bought the Burl simply because of my personal goals as an ARTIST/player--to be utterly digitally agnostic. I fear the market is going to shit and I want to be able to track "my sound" to any double rate PCM thing I can find--be it an iPad or a SSD laptop...or some little hardware unit that might be made with shitty IO (but having a digital IO)...and I like the non linear response. I grew up with that--hit it harder for something than others...have it respond differently (intentionally)...and because I've spent too long getting to where I'm OK with digital mixing to go back. Analog IS easier to get to sound good, IME. But, I've put in the woodshed time to be able to produce mixes I'm happy with completely digitally. To that end, I have mixes up right now of my new stuff--and the amount of third party DSP is really limited and has really nuanced impact. Which means that I could pull the tracks into Logic or Auria on an iPad--and have basically the same thing. Reverb is still hardware. That's the fly in my ointment. But, that's what I'm working towards. Whether I'm tracking for ME...or doing an overdub guitar or Hammond or EP or bass--whatever for someone else, I can pull the 15 year old PC out of the closet and do it--sounds the same.

That's my way of dealing with the fact that engineers no longer drive the market--get OK with using whatever "new market engineer" driven consumer system is around. Give me good INPUT...solid DA/monitoring...the rest I'm negotiable on.

I did the "tape deck" to disk thing with an old mx2424. Sure, it worked, but i realized it held me back too, besides it being an unreliable hunk of shit.. anyway, i went daw thinking i would use that until i figured something out that was better.. and never did. Hybrid is the way to go and don't let anyone say otherwise. When they do, they are just making excuses for their own biases.